Bars where Pete has had a Drink (3,476 bars; 1,545 bars in Seattle) - Click titles below for Lists:

Bars where Pete has had a drink

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Anchors Down wants to be a marine working class sort of bar, and they did a nice job implementing the nautical theme with port hole windows, an early 1900s bar, reclaimed wood, old rope, globes, and ship wheels. The appetizers and house cocktails are not particularly appealing to me, so whether this becomes a bar I go to repeatedly will depend primarily on the crowd it attracts, and the vibe that creates. The bar is owned by a couple of managers from Laura Olson's places, Amy Graeff (Grim's) and Cristo Williams (Auto Battery), with Olson as a silent partner. Anchors customers can order fancy hot dogs from Olson's Po Dog next door, which are delivered through a window between the places. The building is old (1906) and said to have once housed a mortuary, so I look forward to the inevitable ghost stories of the staff.

Up in Sultan, just three miles down the highway from Bubba's Road House, is the SkyRiver Pub and Eatery. If a "pub and eatery" conjures images of expensive, finished wood, rows of microbrew taps, and platters of hot wings, the SkyRiver is going to be a bit of a surprise -- this pub is a ramshackle dive just up from the Wallace and Skykomish river. The building is very old -- in tax records it is listed as having been constructed in 1900, which usually means an unknown number of years before 1900. Patron Wayne told me it was once a lodging house for railroad workers, and has been a bar since at least the 70s -- possibly hosting hippies attending the big Sky River rock festivals. In any case, it's just the sort of place I'm hoping for when I drive through an area like this.

I was told that one of the guys in this painting
still comes into the place; he's about 60 now.
Sky River Pub & Eatery, Sultan< WA

Saturday, February 22, 2014

The Windmill has a reputation for serving (and counting) good steaks, with the current count over 1 million served. It is not clear when the place, constructed during prohibition, first became a legal bar, but it appears to have been shortly after prohibition. From the website:

"In its early years, The Windmill was a typical “road house” of its time as it was on the northwest fringe of Wenatchee. It was said to have been frequented by counterfeiters and legend has it that the upstairs room was a meeting place for bootleggers. The Windmill had gained a “late night” reputation. Following the repeal of prohibition, The Windmill was granted an unusual state liquor license allowing the sale of unopened containers “to go”. This was evidently due to the operators practice of putting a bottle of beer in sack lunches made for State Highway Department Road Crews. The Highway Department remains our neighbor today just to the north of our building."

It was in the 1950s that the place was converted to a more upscale and family-friendly restaurant with an emphasis on steaks, and in 1962 they began counting them as they were served. The bar is nothing fancy but has some pleasant wine selections and cocktail staples. Seafood dishes and pastas offer alternatives to the steaks, in the cozy, knotty pine interior, which feels like a cafe along a mountain highway.

Joe's is basically one of those large, suburban style bars with pull tabs, pool tables, tv sports, jello shots, flavored vodkas, and pretty standard pub food (steaks, burgers, salads). It does have a bit more personality than the typical strip mall suburb version of these bars, with some nice woody interior and decor that goes beyond the standard beer company paraphernalia.

AKA "Wally's House of Booze," Wally's Tavern is a classic small town dive during the day, but it appears that it can get quite hopping with some interesting bands on weekend nights.

Wenatchee, WA is a town of great signs, and the Wally's sign is one that demands you check the place out.

I would love to know how old Wally's is and how long there's been a bar in this space. The very limited city guide information I have at does not list a Wally's in the 1936 or 1940 directories (or 1907), but these do list several bars of other names on Wenatchee Ave without specific addresses.

There's a carved sign in the Tumwater proclaiming "Best Damn Bar in Town," and it appears that a plurality of locals appears to agree. It is pleasantly glowing at night, with live music a few nights a week, and karaoke on others.

Friday, February 21, 2014

Munchen Haus is part and parcel of the Bavarian village theme of Leavenworth, and if you and your party are in the right frame of mind for kitschy, touristy good time, you will have a good time here and on the town.

On the east side of the Cascade mountain range where Icicle Creek meets the Wenatchee River, Leavenworth is a town of about 2,000 people which attracts 2 million tourists a year. After Lamb-Davis Lumber Company shut down and the Great Northern Railway moved on in the 1920s, Leavenworth struggled for survival through the Great Depression on through the 1960s. When a 1962 plan from the University of Washington's Bureau of Community Development recommended attracting various industries but without an emphasis on tourism, Ted Price and Bob Rogers stepped in. Rogers and Price (a gay couple, not out at the time) had converted the nearby Squirrel Tree Inn to a pre-industrial Bavarian theme, and they recommended doing the same for the dying town of Leavenworth. Having difficulty convincing the town, they and Carolyn Schutte began buying property in the area and remodeling it. By July 1970 the town established the Leavenworth Design Review Board which required all construction and remodeling -- down to the Safeway, the McDonalds, the bank, and the gas station -- to be done in prescribed Bavarian styles. Nowadays the town always seems to be celebrating one oddball festival or another -- on one trip a few years ago we arrived to see a volleyball game in the snow between one team dressed as members of Fred Flintstone's Buffaloes Lodge and the other dressed as sandwiches.

By 2000 when Oliver and Pam Brulotte bought a small space where they could sell Kettlekorn in a covered area between shops, Leavenworth was brimming with shops selling nutcrackers and nesting dolls, Christmas ornaments and funny mugs, candies and cheeses. The shack was Bavarian themed of course, and they eventually expanded to selling microbrews and bratwursts (with 10 different mustard choices). Because they're outside, they're not always the best choice in the Winter months that are the most popular now with the tourists, but when it's warm enough it is a fine little stop.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

I first made it to this historic bar in the old railroad stop town of Skykomish three weeks after some knucklehead burned it down in the early morning of April 10th, 2012, in an attempt to cover his tracks after he sawed open the ATM machine to get to the $3300 inside. I returned in April the next year, about three months after the owners opened the rebuilt version in January 2013. There were pleasant people inside happy to talk about it, and the bartender even called the owner Charlie Brown to come over and give me a little history. Charlie and his wife Theora "Teddy" Ryder are only the 4th set of owners in the bar's history, with Teddy purchasing the place in 1980. A photo in the bar shows a very young Teddy in front of the bar with her schoolmates, with a thought balloon added to show her thinking she's going to buy the joint some day.

A bar first opened on this spot in 1897, constructed and run by Patrick McEvoy, who had been the engineer of the first train scheduled to go through Skykomish on June 18, 1893. At that time it was The Olympia, which itself burned down along with most of downtown Skykomish in 1904. Rebuilt in 1905, conflicting accounts I have found have it being renamed the Whistling Post either at the time it was rebuilt after the fire, or just after prohibition by Brian Thompson, who owned the bar from 1934 to 1968. (A whistling post is a marker along the side of the tracks which informs the engineer to blow the whistle before an upcoming crossing.) The location made it through the prohibition years as the Maple Leaf Confectionery, and Charlie says it was also a card room and dance hall.

The locals were very pleased to see the old place rebuilt, and many of them helped in the effort, including assembling the antique, oak back bar Teddy and Charlie purchased in Omaha, Nebraska. I had a pleasant chat with customer Bob, who moved up to these parts about five years ago, after retiring from the carpenters union, and took in the historic photos on the walls. I must admit that I would prefer the dark, woody, divey old place I see in some of the olderphotos to the bright, neatly-wallboarded new version, but I'm glad to see the place up and running and with the exterior built to match the old building.
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Sunday, February 16, 2014

About 25 miles east of the Washington state coast, where the Sultan River meets the Skykomish, and Highway 2 rambles eastward toward Stevens Pass and the Cascade Loop, lies the old prospectors' stop of Sultan, WA, population 4 to 5 thousand people. There, hidden just off the highway, is a modest looking building with a residential-looking chain-link fenced yard and "LOGGERS" written across the facade in unrefined, block letters. Inside the Loggers Inn (AKA "Loggers Tavern," "Loggers Bar," or just "Loggers") is an inviting, old, neighborhood bar with a friendly, lively crowd, and a beautiful, antique back bar.

Back bar at Loggers Inn, Sultan, WA

In 2007, Leo Moreno left his job selling cars in California and bought the place, and if he doesn't make a long go of it, it will not be for lack of activity. Loggers now has DJs, games on the big screens, beer pong, poker, darts, golf tournaments, karaoke, SeaGal appearances, birthday celebrations, and various other events. But Loggers also preserves the past with the signs on the telephone pole out front, the old floor on the east side, funky light fixtures over the bar, and the great back bar. I talked to regulars like Randy and Garrett, and some of them told me about when they helped save the bar when the water from the flooding Skykomish was calf high.

Fleur de lis applicque on top of bar in Loggers Inn, Sultan WA

It's very difficult to tell how old Loggers actually is. While the front was rebuilt in 1976, Leo believes the eastern portion of the building, which once served as a brothel, goes back to the 1880s, all the while under the Loggers name. County tax records do not date the older structure. As far as the back bar itself, Leo says it is half of a Brunswick bar that came around the cape in the 1880s, to a bar once across the street, and was later split down the middle (lengthwise) with half moving into Loggers. Leo thought the other half may have been in the J&M Cafe in Seattle, but this is not the case, as that bar (which now resides in "Harry's Bar" on Capitol Hill) is quite different. There is a very similar bar in The Shire in Chehalis, however the capitals are clearly different. I was not able to find a similar bar in any of my pictures from old Seattle bars (including old J&M neighbors the Central and Merchants), however I was able to find photos of very similar bars in Colorado and Arizona.

In "Hoist a Cold One: Historic Bars of the Southwest," author Melody Groves and photographer Myke Groves feature photos of two bars that look pretty much identical to each other -- and look to me almost exactly like the Loggers bar with the exception of the top piece. I.e. the Loggers bar looks like these with the portion starting at the egg and dart beading simply left off, or possibly later removed to fit in the new location. The fleur de lis applicques, the beading along the inside of the spandrels, the capitals, and the basic forms all look alike to me.

Curiously, the owners of the bars in Arizona and Colorado give very different origins for what look like identical bars. The bar in Grumpy's Saloon in Silverton, CO is said to be ordered from a Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog and assembled in 1901, while the strikingly similar bar in The Palace in Prescott, AZ is said to be a one of the many Brunswick-Balke-Collender bars from the late 19th century. I suspect one of these simply inherited an inaccurate story over the years, most likely the Sears story (although Sears did indeed sell this general style of back bar at the time). I have taken the liberty of including some limited scans of these bars for comparison, which do not do justice to the fine photos in this lovely book. If anyone knows another location in Seattle or Washington that features a bar like these, I would love to hear from you.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Radiator Whiskey is an homage to brown liquor and meat from Dan Bugge, the current owner of the tony Matt's in the Market across the hall. Radiator is less several degrees less precious and its about time we had a great bar of this type in Seattle's famous Pike Place Market. It is an in-your-face sacrarium of carnivorism, with skulls resting on the grill hood and featuring a massive platter of half a pig's head. The pork head is smoked for half a day after several days of brining, and leads eaters to fork out the tastiest, tenderous parts of the meat with the delicacy of a surgeon.

The large simulated cask behind the bar features smaller casks with barrel-aged cocktails (try the "1794") and the bar offers over 100 whiskeys. And if somehow the booze and masses of dead animals does not seem quite wanton enough, you can grab a table near the large picture window that gazes out upon the Deju Vu sex shop below.